Marxism

Marxism- political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx.

Marxist ideologies

Marx argued that capitalism is based on profit motive, meaning that under capitalism (society based on wealth), profits originate from the exploitation of workers.

Capatist socialty:

• Proletariet- the working class (who sell the labour)
• Bourgeoisie- own their own production and employes the working class.

Bourgeosie can be further divided:

-wealthy bourgeosie: do not need to work themselves

-petty bourgeosie:employes others and work themselves

Marxism and the media

-Media producers: they maintain the status quo, keeping everything the same. Examples are newspapers, soaps and adverts.

-The culture industries: they construct texts to generate mass audiences by dumbing down media texts.

-Mass media: entertainign workers by drip feeding them ideologies and beleifs (effects theory)

Althusser

Ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) operate alongside Repressive state apparatuses (RSAs), (miliatary, police etc...) to maintain these bourgeois ideologies:

1. religion
2. education
3. family (values)
4. legal and political system
5. cultural and communications systems

Gramsci

Hegemony- the dominance of ideologies of the ruling class. By maintaing these ideologies, the ruling class could retain hegemonic control.

Eisenstein and montage

Sergei eisenstein took a structurelist approach, complaining that cinema is designed to make audience believe in capitalist propaganda and ideologies. In his films the narrative is shown through the montage.

Williams

High culture: status very different from popular culture events. Popular culture is seen as second class.